This collection marks a continuation of the work I
ventriloquised through my solo creation, the fictional bilingual Belgian poet
René Van Valckenborch, in A Translated
Man (read an early account here;
the book is also available from Shearsman here ).

I see these two books as the first two parts of a fictional
poetry trilogy.There are a number of possibilities for the (not necessarily book-length) third part. Do I turn back to Van Valckenborch in some way? Do I travel back in time? Is it time for the Manx Modernists? Or for the bifurcating 'Robert Sheppards' announced (but rejected) in Twentieth Century Blues?

Friday, March 16, 2018

I made a habit of posting my
topical sonnets earlier last year as they were written. (The Wyatt poems will be published soon by Knives Forks and Spoons.) I
write about the Earl of Surrey ones here ,
where I also explain that the poems were temporarily posted, partly because I
was often commenting on contemporary events, like Boris' gaffes, and I
wanted to get an immediate audience. Here's
one touching on Trump's 'trans ban' and upon the macho
version of diplomacy that seems to prevail in the White House. I held it
back from publication as it became a veritable thicket of scare-quotes
to show I wasn't expressing the opinions involved. That's also why I
published it with the 'original' but it clearly shows what I'm doing, I
hope, at:http://internationaltimes.it/direct-rule-in-peace-with-foul-desire See here for
one reference to my previous sequence, feeding off of the sonnets of
Charlotte Smith, and featuring Boris' then most recent gaffe. Here's my
latest. I've been
hinting here that I've got another sequence of poems I wanted to
detourn; this time it is EEB's exquisite 'Poems from the Portuguese'. I
pondered 'Brazilian Sonnets' as a title, using some bossa nova tropes,
but they just got in the way. I regard
the title (came to me in a flash) as
peculiarly apposite: I'd read that one of our leading (Tory) politicians
has a Non Disclosure Agreement with one (or more?) of his lovers; the
second poem is about the President's Club outrage - the girls had to
sign such an agreement. This one follows up on that... In a sense Robert
and EB Browning had a
mutual non-disclsoure agreement during their courtship. (There's another
possible scenario too: Mistress Elizabeth receives gentlemen callers
in Wimpole St, who have to perform beastly acts, possibly taking on the
persona of the
dog Flush (see Virginia Woolf's fine biography of this hound) I
activated that possibility in one of the poems, but haven't returned to
it. Woof). This one is the first of the group of seven (out of
fourteen): like earlier 'Direct Rule' poems they are overdubbed by
another voice. The narrator returns in this one, one of the 'Cake and Eat It' poems that I think will end my 100 sonnets.....Here's a HAP, soon to be published in full by Knives Forks and Spoons: from
Hap: Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch.

EBB's most famous (I will not be versioning this one)

FIRST FRAGMENTS

‘Very likely for the poet it is
the time to write sonnets. Most certainly it is not a time for the creative man
to fail, to stop working.’ Picasso, p. 68-9

OR (more like it, I should think, but I can never quite tell at this stage) :

YES, call me by my pet-name!

Pet? Petronella? Petsy? Laura?
Where Petrarch is

there is Poesy, as he makes for
himself a self

in language, however embarrassing
his cowpat lyricism,

since he – I – could not hope for governmental
laurels.

I’ll almost miss the barked command,
the Skripal panic;

unreconciled, I’ll not spend more
time with my families.

She no longer calls. I sit silent with my warming beer,

while she calls Go, yes, calls Go!
I’ll let it go. But

my mouth bears the testimony of
those exanimate,

buried beneath my jokes, killing
themselves once more.

(This later work doesn’t just
rehash the early stuff.) East

and West divide; Europe
unites! Putin turns on and off the gas.

Call me Brittledick, Gruntcakes,
Gruffnuts, but call me!

Petal, you might find me hoisted
by my own pettitoes.

16th March 2018

But, yes oh yes, after an evening bumping into the man who is arranging Ken Dodd's three big hits for his funeral, for a string quartet (in the Belve) here's the latest one:

YES, call me by my pet-name!

Pet! Petsy? Petronella? Laura!
Where Petrarch is

there lies Poesy, as he makes for
himself a self

in language, however embarrassing
his cowpat lyricism,

since he – I – could not hope for imperial laurels.

I’ll almost miss the barked command,
the Skripal panic.

Unreconciled, I’ll not spend more
time with my families.

She no longer calls. I sit silent with my warming beer,

while she calls Go, yes, calls Go!
Ba! I’ll let it go. But

my mouth bears the testimony of
those exanimate,

buried beneath my jokes, who
laughed themselves to death.

(This later work doesn’t just
rehash the early stuff.) East

and West divide; Europe
unites! Putin turns off and on the gas.

Don’t call me Gruffnuts or Gruntcakes,
but call me now! Or,

Petal, you’ll last hear of me hoisted
by my own pettitoes.

16th -17th March
2018

Pettitoes are pig's toes, so lucky he's not hoisted by his

The poem The Soul’s Rialto
Hath its Merchandise contains the lines:

‘The fundamental unit of
post-Brexit trade

will be American Boneless Pork Rectums!’

Above is the image to prove it! Though I've removed the word 'inverted'
from the poem (I don't know what that means in terms of pork arse).
Here's a man who is proving he alone can eat it. (Remember John Gummer
and the Burger?)

Thursday, March 15, 2018

I have been writing poems that re-write the Petrarchan tradition for a while and wondering whether they need to be displayed alongside the original. Possibly Wyatt's, Milton's and EBB's are well-enough known for this not to be a problem, but Surrey and Charlotte Smith are more obscure (but shouldn't be, and weren't in the past). So I have experimented with this poem from the 'Direct Rule' part of the Surrey poems (they are the ones that are not versions of Petrarch but are trenchantly 'occasional'. This one involved touching on Trump's 'trans ban' and upon the macho version of diplomacy that seems to prevail in the White House. I held it back from publication as it became a veritable thicket of scare-quotes to show I wasn't expressing the opinions involved. The two poems together make that clear. Thanks to Rupert for taking this for International Times.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Liverpool
was the birthplace of Ern Malley, probably the most famous English language
fictional poet. I took part in a celebration of his 100th birthday
on 14 March, on 13th March, last night, round the corner at the Handyman Pub. Believe it or not, I’ve met a composer, David Whyte, who has set all the Malley poems to
music. The event was his brainchild.

It was pretty splendid, all round, with two bands, exciting stuff on video, a fair-sized audience. The professorial quotient was pretty high and a lot of the performers were fresh from UCU picket-lines, so that gave the evening an edge. Good to relax back at David's place too, literally round the corner. Thanks David and Vicky and Kirsteen and Patricia and Kait and Paul - and all the others, whose names I didn't catch.

In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.

Apart from the
travel, which could detain this account - only to say the unscheduled
long journey back between Derby and Crewe, in a single carriage train
full of drunks (at 8.00?) was not really a highlight - this year's event
was most enjoyable.

We arrived in time for a quick chat with Tony Frazer, and to suggest he came in to watch Simon and myself reading.

We were there to launch Twitters for a Lark. As many will know, I worked in collaboration, over a
number of years, with a team of real writers, to create a lively and
entertaining body of work of fictional European poets. Read more about the European Union
of Imaginary Authors here and here. All the collaborators, Patricia and Simon included, are
accessible via links here.

Accompanied by biographical
notes, the poets grow in vividness until they seem to possess lives of their
own; they are collected now in Twitters
for a Lark, published by Tony's Shearsman. More on Twittershere
and here.

This collection marked a continuation of the work I
ventriloquised through my solo creation, the fictional bilingual Belgian poet
René Van Valckenborch, in A Translated
Man (read an early account here;
the book is also available from Shearsman here ). And, as I began my (our) reading, I explained how the new project emerged from the first book, when Van Valckenborch invented the EUOIA ('Belgian dolls!' I quipped) and read

(set list)

1. 'Book 4 Poem 1' by Sophie Poppmeier, which is dedicated to Tony Frazer, who was there. (Hence my insistence. He doesn't like to leave the book stall.)

2.
Gurkan Arnavut's 'When Egrets Rise' came next, and I explained how Zoe
Skoulding's suggestion that she and I collaborate on one of the EUOIA
poets (they were 5 of them completed, like Sophie, plus a list of names, at this point)
kickstarted the whole thing off, as I realised the best way to do ALL 28 was in collaboration and to let the collaborator lead.

3. Patricia Farrell
and I read a two-voice performance version of Italyo Dimitrov's 'Behind
Into Beyond', which is one of the only poems you can see who dun wot.
See also here and here:

7. I read one of Sean
Eoghan's poems, the one based on AE (to whom Joyce famously (IOUed), the
only poem to mention 'Brexit'. I explained how Brexit wasn't even a
thing when I began the poem with Zoe, but it was by the time I was
working with Steve McCaffery on Sean, towards the end of the project. History enveloped it.
(But of course, if you want anti- Brexit poems, I've got plenty of those!)

It
felt great again to read with a couple of the contributors, and it was
Simon's go next. He was launching his very fine Shearsman pamphlet OR he
was celebrating being 50 with this reflective and funny poem. (See the balloons behind us, and one of his collage-novel stills, in the photograph. And there was cake!) In the final year of my 40s is much wittier and funny than the audience seemed to take it to be, with verses that ranged from the personal, funny:

In the final year of my 40s
I shall accommodate my disappointments
in an outhouse. There
they will be free to live
a full, frank and unfettered life.

Through to 'decisions' about the mechanics of future writing:

In the final year of my 40s
my failure to write a new poetics
founded upon ergonomics
will permit my poems
a greater grace and idiocy.

Simon’s poetry publications
include Beneath (Shearsman: 2015) Archilochus on the Moon
(Shearsman: 2013), Newton’s Splinter (Open House: 2012), Nitrate
(Salt: 2010), A Clutch of Odes (Oystercatcher: 2009), and Hearing is
Itself Suddenly a Kind of Singing (Salt: 2004), and now this new one As a critic he has
written widely, editing the books The Salt Companion to John James, and Tending
the Vortex: The Works of Brian Catling.He
is Reader in Contemporary Poetic Practice at De Montfort University, Leicester.Various posts on/by Simon on my blog Pages here:

Patricia had made him
a box of text. And I gave him 'Burnt Journal 1968', a birthday poem: 'Rhythms
won't unstick from our saccharine ears/even The Soft Machine can't
blast away the VC10'.

Later in the afternoon there was a reading by Lila Matsumoto and Tim Youngs. Lila's new book is Urn and Drum , excellent stuff, judging from her reading.

OK: books I bought: first ALL Shearsman: Lila's, Simon's, Christopher Whyte's After Russia, trans of Tsvetaeva; Christopher Middleton's Serpentine, in Tony's new 'Library' imprint; Mark Goodwin's Back of a Vast; Robert Vas Dias (to whom I talked at the launch of Atlantic Drift )' Black Book; and Aidan Semmens' Life Has Become More Cheerful (which looks fab).

Andy Taylor gave me a copy of his new Red Ceilings' Aire, delicate poems of place and being.I bought a book on Petrarch (probably a bit late in my obsession).

This year's States of Independence is our ninth. It's a book festival in a day, a marketplace,
a conference, a chance to relax and listen to some readings, an opportunity to argue about
issues in the industry and to meet with independent presses from across the region. Check it out next year!

States of Independence supports independent thinking, independent writing and independent
presses. Join us for the day or an hour. Attend lots of events - you will be spoiled for
choice - or just one, or simply come along and browse through the twenty or so bookstalls
to see what the independent sector is publishing.
As always there will be poetry and fiction readings and industry panels discussing current hot
topics
States of Independence is a free event, underwritten by Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham
and the Centre for Creative Writing at De Montfort University, with the support of over
fifty writers and over thirty presses.

All sessions are free, no tickets required.
Just turn up and stay for an hour or two, or the whole day.

States of Independence is organised and funded by Five Leaves Bookshop in
Nottingham and the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Thursday, March 08, 2018

A year ago the Sheppard Symposium happened. Here's a hub post that describes it all. Here are a couple of images of panelists and audience. THEIR BRAINS HURT. If you want your brains to hurt like this, don't despair, a book of the proceedings (and more), edited by Christopher Madden and James Byrne, will be published soon!

Hilary Davies: ‘What is the Wind Doing?’ Robert Sheppard, The Meaning of Form in
Contemporary Innovative Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan), £66.99.

It's long, detailed, not entirely sympathetic, but so what? Its level of attention is important. If she doesn't like my style, my academic language (it's an academic book), that's OK by me.
A couple of things did rankle, though: I thought I invented the aphorism: 'Paraphrase is amnesia of form'. She says it's a quote from Angela Leighton. It's the sort of thing she might have said. Davies also ploughs through the innovative/mainstream opposition, which is not central to this book (unlike The Poetry of Saying; see here), since it has a wider application, though my specific interest - not dissimilar to, say, Susan Wolfson's focus on the Romantics - is in formally investigative writing (some Americans in here too). (My previous volumes are The Poetry of Saying (Liverpool University Press, 2005; access its main thesis here)and
When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry(Shearsman,
2011), and they are much more historical than this new one.

I did take exception to: 'he’s keen to assert street cred through examples of
innovative poetry that draw on post-punk, transcripts of harrowing rape trials,
the hereditaments and detritus of a post-historic, post-modern world'. My interest in Barry MacSweeney's work or Vanessa Place's is not to get-down-with-the-kids, but to make deliberate formal analyses of work that would seem to be so obviously content-based. The book is not arguing that content doesn't matter (there's a hint that I'm saying this, but I'm not), but that content can only be read through an awareness of form for a fully literary reading (as Derek Attridge would say), that what Veronica Forrest-Thomson (who Davies doesn't mention, but I do, at some length!) calls 'internal expansion' takes precedent over 'external expansion'.

If you can't access the PN Review, read the first review on the Tears in the Fence website by Ian Brinton. Thanks for this consideration too. Here.

If you're not familiar with the arguments being touched on here, a good deal of the book was discussed on this blog, indeed some posts are deliberately loose dry runs of chapters. Read more about the book here. Or go straight here.You can purchase individual chapters electronically.